Spring Training Memory, 1983: Ralph 'The Major' Houk is in command

Associated Press file photoYankee manager Ralph Houk, center, who would one day lead the Red Sox, watches Yankee legend Joe DiMaggio try out a bat during spring training. At left is another Yankee Hall of Famer, catcher Yogi Berra.

LAKELAND, Fla., 1983 – What a pleasure. A beautiful day in central Florida, and a seat in the Red Sox dugout next to The Major, Ralph Houk.

It’s an hour before a Sox-Tigers exhibition game, and he’s talkin’ baseball.

“See that kid? A real worker, and he loves it, loves the game,” he says, pointing toward his backup catcher, Gary Allenson.

Houk is the kind of baseball man you could listen to all day. He can tell you about catching Vic Raschi and managing Roger Maris. He can tell you about the Yankees when they were great, and the Yankees when they had Horace Clarke.

As I listen, I can’t help thinking ... here’s a guy who went to hell and back as an Army ranger in World War II. No wonder he commands respect wherever he goes.

Houk managed the Red Sox from 1981-84, at a time between the loss of Carlton Fisk and the arrival of Roger Clemens.

In those years, he learned to love Winter Haven, the team’s spring home. He settled there after retiring in the fall of ‘84. In 2010, he died there at the age of 90.